A Favor
by Collie
Summary: Mr. Pennywell asks Myrnin for a favor. Sadly there isn't a character category for Pennywell, which makes me sad.


**A Favor**

Common Grounds was just that; common ground. Considered neutral territory for most of the population of Morganville, it was a place that catered to both humans and vampires alike, though vampire beverages were pretty much an off-the-menu sort of thing. It was just a few minutes past closing and Eve was the last one there. She just had a few more glasses to wash before she could bail, and she was counting the minutes.

"Time to close up for the evening," came a sharp, oddly-timbered voice that cut right through the music Eve had blasting in the otherwise silent coffee shop. The young Goth girl whirled around, holding the sink's extendable faucet in front of her like it was an actual firearm, kohl-rimmed eyes wide with both surprise and fear, and then quickly annoyance upon _realizing_ her surprise and fear. She hadn't even heard the little bell over the door ring, and for some reason that just made her hate the man standing in front of the door even more.

Pennywell – _Mr_. Pennywell – stepped inside the main lobby of the coffee shop, as calm and as well put-together as he always was; straight as a razor and just as sharp, in a very simple plain black suit. He was flanked on either side by two other vampires, neither dressed nearly as snappy as he was. They both looked young and stupid, but Eve knew they were old. Very old. Thanks to Pennywell's former boss, Bishop, there were no young vampires anymore, really; just Michael, and now her own brother, Jason. Looks could be deceiving, and these two probably had centuries on her.

"I was just in the middle of it, Mr. Pennywise," Eve said with pretend enthusiasm and a sloppy salute. "So if you wanted anything other than a stale bagel or some clotted AB pos, then you're shit outta luck."

"I want none of the things you serve here," Pennywell said, his voice as even as his glare. "And my name is Penny_well_. You'll do well to remember."

"Sorry," Eve said, sounding nothing of the sort as she turned back to the sink with a smirk. "You just look like a clown to me." She knew that her bravado was forced and that lipping off to this guy was probably a bad idea, but there was a blinged-out, silver-coated stake under the counter that was giving her a little more backbone than she probably should have been showing in this situation.

Pennywell, however, _didn't_ know about the stake, and it was pretty difficult to threaten someone with something they didn't even know existed. Eve didn't see the gesture the androgynous vampire gave to his thugs, but she _did_ hear the authoritative snap of fingers, and before she could even react, both of her arms were seized, one by each goon, and she was lifted until only the steel-toes of her boots scraped along the ground. "Remove her to the parking lot," Pennywell said as he stepped to the side, the pale fingers of one hand moving to idly adjust the cuff of his opposite sleeve. "I have no doubt she can see herself home."

"Let me go, you fucking meat-heads!" Eve grimaced, immediately regretting the hard twisting squirm she gave, as her not-so-considerable weight was still enough to pull against the joints of her arms, causing her a good bit of discomfort.

"One moment," came Pennywell's smug voice, and the two large vampires stopped and turned her, forcing her to come face to face with the pale vampire who was making her night a _lot_ less enjoyable. "Do you only stock AB positive?" he asked, the barest hint of curiosity in his voice. "I wouldn't say no to some O-negative." The side of his mouth curled just slightly, and Eve gave a barely suppressed shudder as she struggled to remember her blood type, wondering if he was referring to _her_ or the supply the kept in the back.

"We're out," Eve replied flatly between clenched teeth, her lips twisting against a scowl as she glared at him, her sheer force of all all that was stopping her from saying something really stupid that would probably have her on the menu tonight. "It's really popular."

"Yes, I imagine it would be." And with a dismissive wave of his hand, Eve was turned once more and once again found herself being dragged toward the door. "Wait!" she called out, trying to turn her head back over her shoulder to get Pennywell's attention, feeling a bubbling well of defiance inside, and a nagging, driving need to get in last smart-ass remark, even as she was being ushered out. "Why do all of you fangers always ask for O-neg?"

Pennywell's expression didn't change save the subtle arch of a single eyebrow, which for him spoke volumes. "Didn't you know?" he deadpanned. "O-negative is the universal donor. It's the most satisfying for all of us."

"...Oh," Eve said, sounding a little disappointed in the honest rationality of his reply. "So that's why Count Crackula hates AB..." And she actually snorted a laugh at the thought of vampires at the supermarket, fighting over the last bag of O-neg, like housewives battled over Furbies in the aisles of Wal-Mart a bunch of Christmases ago. His goons dropped her outside on the sidewalk before stepping back to stand, either side, in front of the still unlocked door. Eve made a fuss of straightening her clothes while glaring at them, but naturally she was ignored, and with a huff and a middle finger extended at Pennywell through the window, she stomped off toward her car, the coming dusk sending long, bending shadows out across the nearly empty parking lot.

Inside, the large shop was silent now, Pennywell having shut off the music the moment he'd had the opportunity. "Count Crackula?" murmured aloud to himself as he idly wondered to whom Eve was referring, before a voice that set his shoulders tense and forced the fingers of his right hand clenched cut through the quiet, coffee-scented air.

"The girl's charmingly provocative, if not inadvertently witty and apt pet name for me," came Myrnin's voice from behind, his lilting words swooping in just as much as Pennywell was certain the vampire himself was, no doubt enrobed in one of his ridiculous and musty velvet coats; a cheap knockoff from the 1970's. A throwback to times he apparently remembered fondly and couldn't bear to part himself from. That was the problem with most modern vampires; they were not at all modern. Stuck in time, like insects in amber. Certainly Pennywell longed for the past, but he tried not to dwell. To drag one's feet made one slow and stagnant. It made one sentimental, like the fool who had just let himself in through the alley entrance, the one typically reserved for those of their kind.

"You allow that human to disparage you that way?" Pennywell asked, giving the vampire he'd been waiting to meet a bland, if not pitying look. "Of course you do," he continued, without waiting for a reply. "Your fondness for your mice is unsettling."

Myrnin ignored Pennywell's cajoling, instead choosing to whip a worn, bone-colored handkerchief from the sleeve of his coat, and after giving it a theatrical twirl in the air, he quickly bent to wipe off one of the seats before sitting with a flourish. "Tell me why you summoned me here, witch-finder," Myrnin asked as he turned his face up, setting night-dark eyes on the other's hawkish face.

"To business, then," Pennywell said with a curt nod, as if he approved. "Very well. That girl, the barista; I want her dead."

Myrnin blinked and gave pause, but kept his expression guarded. "Ah... Steve?"

"Eve, idiot," Pennywell growled.

"Of course, Eve, Eve," Myrnin murmured, his gaze glazing over slightly as he tilted his head, dark hair sliding to fall over his shoulder like a curtain, strands catching and sticking to the brushed velvet like it was velcro. "I expect she is long dead, if you choose to take Genesis at face value, which I both do and don't. In some respects it's a wonderful fiction, don't you think? But so many people swear to the truth of it..."

Pennywell grit his teeth to keep his temper, which was next to impossible around the broken-minded sorcerer. "The other infants she co-habitats with all seem to have made themselves useful at one point or another, so I expect the Founder would be slightly put out if I destroyed any of them," Pennywell continued, ignoring Myrnin's distracted Biblical ramblings, his lip giving the very slightest curl of disdain as the scientist made himself comfortable, legs crossed in the female way while spidery fingers reached for the salt shaker. "But the ghost girl is a waste of space, and the way she speaks to our Lady and treats all of us is unacceptable. The mere fact that she still breathes is a testament to Amelie's growing weakness. I have decided to take matters into my own hands and dispose of her, since neither the ice queen nor her wolf _will_, and I am tired of it reflecting badly on _me_," Pennywell paused to allow Myrnin to respond, but was greeted with nothing but silence. He glared impatiently as the older vampire dumped out a few of the miniscule salt crystals onto the table, before wetting his fingertip with his tongue and pressing it back against the grains to collect them.

"I've always been intensely curious about salt," the mad scientist murmured, mostly to himself, as he held his finger aloft and eyed it, fascinated, as if the slowly melting substance held all the secrets of the universe. "They say the pure, crystalline structure can disrupt magic energy."

"Focus, heathen," Pennywell sneered, lifting thin arms and crossing them over his narrow chest. "And mind your vulgar tongue around me."

"My tongue has a mind of its own," Myrnin said as he swept the spilled salt off the table, before holding the shaker out toward Pennywell. "Toss a bit over your left shoulder to keep the Devil at bay?" he offered, his smile as sweet and inviting as the pastries in the display case.

And now the witch was taunting him.

"You infuriate me, you moldering excuse for poor man's alchemist. You're lucky I need you, or I'd-"

"You would what?" Myrnin replied, sounding bored. Because he _was_. "You would do nothing. Now get to your point."

Pennywell's anger simmered just below the surface, barely contained behind his cracking calm countenance. His eyes held the hatred that only zealotry could birth, and too many years moving in one direction made it virtually impossible to ever sway course.

"You will give me a poison," he stated, as if he were the one in charge here. "Something that your mouse cannot trace back to you. It must look like an accident."

Myrnin and Pennywell were born of different times, though not so different that they could not relate to each other on a base level. Myrnin thrived amongst chemical reactions and Hermetic principles, steam and electricity and the magic of blood, transfiguring and creating, and pulling the stars from the sky and keeping them in jars. Of grabbing chaos by the throat and shaking it until it resembled order. And Pennywell was a killer of his kind. A destroyer of the arcane. A staunch man who lived by tenants and did no thinking for himself, but let a book and other men guide his sword. A witch-killer.

Burned up inside by his God until nothing was left but a shell of obedient faithfulness. Of righteous fury. Of blind, cruel judgment. It was rumored that he was plucked from life by the very thing he despised the most; a creature borne of passion and lust and predatory glee. Vampire. And now Pennywell walked in two worlds, both always tearing at his mind, and he had everyone but Myrnin fooled. The androgyne was no saner than he.

But in one way they were the same; both eager to please their master, and unwilling to let anything stand in their way.

"I will do no such thing," Myrnin stated with a scoff, as if Pennywell had just asked him to cut off his balls and hand them over. Preposterous. He stood quickly then, so suddenly that the chair he'd so meticulously brushed off earlier overturned and clattered to the floor to lay on its side. The Inquisitor stiffened, tensed, and Myrnin smiled to himself. Good. The tension was good. "Unless the Founder commands a life be taken, I am quite content to let those children run about as they see fit. The black-haired one does not offend me. She invited me to her engagement party, you know," and he smiled, as if the two shared a secret. "It was a very exciting affair."

Even as Pennywell closed the distance between them and grabbed him by the flimsy lapels of his coat, Myrnin's smile remained. Fingers hard as bone gripped the old material so tightly that it tore down the seam of one side, and he held Myrnin so close that they would have shared breath, had either of them the indulgence to breathe.

"You are a pathetic, cowardly fool," Pennywell hissed, eyes glittering dangerously and already beginning to rim themselves in red. "Not fit for anything other than licking the boots of your betters. I should rip your spine out right now and make a walking stick out of it," he continued, losing his temper quickly, and Myrnin's smile only widened. "It isn't as if you have any use for it anymore. You're perfectly adept at bowing and scraping; a spine only necessary to those who actually stand up for what they believe in."

"Ah, there you are," Myrnin murmured, very calmly reaching up to pat Pennywell on the head, running his hand once over smooth hair, as if rewarding a pet for good behavior.

And then all hell broke loose.

Pennywell's demeanor snapped, all red flashing eyes and fangs glinting in the light. Like every other boy, Myrnin had always wondered what it would be like to be able to fly, and tonight he was granted the privilege of finding out. The alchemist flew across the length of the coffee shop at an alarming speed, and the impact of his body completely destroyed the carefully assembled display of exotic teas and coffees that lined the side of the wall. His body had barely slumped to the floor before the enraged epicene was on him again, dragging him back to his feet.

"Thank you for the hand up, my good man," Myrnin said, goading Pennywell into even more of a frenzy. The elder had very little fear, knowing that he was both stronger than his age-old foe and, ironically, had a better grip on his mind at the moment. Pennywell's fangs flashed again, but before he could crowd Myrnin in for the bite, a knobbly knee shot up hard between Pennywell's thighs, almost as if trying to prove to an unseen audience that he was, indeed, male. The pale witch-hunter snaked back with a grunt and a growl, hands grasping hard at the air between them, before catching Myrnin's new favorite chair right across the face, sending him sprawling to the floor.

The muffled sound of a broken jaw was like the unspoken signal to end this bout, because at that moment Pennywell half-turned from Myrnin, one hand jutting out, palm facing the wild-haired scientist in a gesture of pause. His other moved up to cradle his chin, eyes glaring a hole in the dirty floor as he physically reset his jaw, holding it still while he waited for it to heal so he could yell at Myrnin again. Myrnin, on the other hand, stood triumphant, one hand bringing the chair back down to set beside him as he practically posed, a pleased smile on his face as he relished in the applause of the unseen audience, having momentarily tamed the fierce white tiger.

"One of these days," Pennywell growled, finally working his jaw back to set as he carefully pushed himself back to his feet, his posture as tense and ruffled as a guard dog waiting to strike. "I will see you staked out, and I will set fire to you myself. And you will burn for your sins like the heretic you are, and I will strip the flesh from your little pet's bones and toss them in to blacken right beside yours."

"How nice," Myrnin quipped, his lips quirking in a smirk as he straightened the remains of his torn coat before wiping off a piece of imaginary lint. "So rarely do I get invited to parties, let alone have one thrown in my honor. I can't wait."

Pennywell's eyes flashed red as he let his anger overtake him again, fangs snapping out in a snarl that left spittle on his lips. Myrnin braced himself for round two, but unsurprisingly was no longer interested in the physical dominance games that the former Inquisitor seemed so fond of – _the measure of a weak mind, these types of violence_ – and as such, when the younger vampire drove a shoulder into his stomach, Myrnin gladly accepted the pain. He spun with the force of the blow, but instead of shoving Pennywell back off of him, the ancient scientist whirled in a flurry of messy hair and ratty velvet, using physics to his advantage by forcibly helping along the most current object in motion in the room –

And propelling Pennywell right through the front window pane of Common Grounds.

"Oops," Myrnin muttered to himself as a bright and tinkling sound filled his ears, grinning a toothy grin as he lifted a foot to rest on the seat of the chair beside him, a hand coming up to shield his eyes from the imaginary sun. He assumed the classic ship captain's position amidst the broken glass that had shattered all over floor inside, and covered the sidewalk outside in a very pretty, glittering blast radius. Dogs started barking, and there was no doubt to either vampire that someone had heard that. That the police would arrive soon.

"This isn't over, witch," Pennywell spat, angrily shaking the glass from his clothes with such force that he manged to rip one of his own lapels. Pity. "We are_ not_ finished."

"Oh, stick your piety back in your pants, man, and quit waggling it about," Myrnin called out, mirthfully shaking his head before turning and boosting himself over the front counter, careful to mind the display items of small cookies and biscotti, oh and the tip jar. He should see that money to Eve. "Indeed we are not finished, as you have been rather obsessed with me for centuries, now!" he called over his shoulder as he plucked a pink Post-It note from behind the register, near the telephone. And a pen. Necessary, that. "You should know by now that flirting with me won't get you anywhe–"

Myrnin stopped his mocking mid-word, jaw snapping shut audibly when he realized that he no longer had an audience. Pennywell and his two assistants had fled, leaving Myrnin to clean up the proverbial mess, as it were. The Welshman pocketed the bills from the tip jar before strolling right over to the broken window, quick eyes darting around as soon as he heard the distant sirens of a police car coming his way. He stepped gingerly outside and then turned quickly to carefully adhere the pink Post-It to the still intact glass on the door before scribbling a quick note:

_Oliver – _

_Mr. Pennywell did it. Your nose is lying. I was never here._

Flourished off with a little smiley face for good measure, Myrnin turned and strolled off into the night, rather quickly, with his coat fluttering out behind him just as he liked it to. Because, really, why _else _would he wear that ratty old thing.

Hopefully Claire knew how to sew.

* * *

I hate asking for reviews, but this is my first jump back into writing in probably about five years. So I'd love a little feedback. It feels pretty rusty, and encouragement is always nice. Thanks, and I hope you liked it. No doubt there will be more to come from these two.


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